One of the architects of the European Super League is now blaming Brexit for its collapse

As the dust settles on the controversial European Super League, those who masterminded the plans are attempting to point fingers and find reasons for its failure and bizarrely Brexit has been blamed.

Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus chairman and one of the chief architects of the breakaway football league, which unravelled just two days after it was announced, believes that the UK leaving the European Union was one of the reasons the six English clubs involved eventually walked away.

Speaking to Reuters, Agnelli said that he had heard “speculation” that “if six teams would have broken away and would have threatened the EPL [English Premier League], politics would have seen that as an attack to Brexit and their political scheme.”

In the days after the league was announced, the British Conservative government had vowed to fight the plans. Prime Minister Boris Johnson branded the league a “cartel” and promised to drop a “legislative bomb” on the teams planning to break away which could have led to their expulsion from the Premier League.

Eventually, the government didn’t need to take any action as Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur all distanced themselves from the league by Wednesday morning meaning that it couldn’t effectively go ahead.

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Comparisons to Brexit had been made in the wake of the Super League’s collapse, with even newspapers on the continent using it in headlines.

Agnelli also suggested that a number of teams had perhaps been dishonest about their interest in the league. He added: “I’m not going to say how many clubs contacted me in just 24 hours asking if they could join. Maybe they lied, but I was contacted by a number of teams asking what they could do to join.”

The Real Madrid president, Florentino Perez, has since said that the plans for the league are now on “standby” but that the maligned competition was actually created to “save football” which was interpreted that way by many fans and pundits who voiced their outrage following the announcement.